Method and Apparatus for Detecting an Address Update

ABSTRACT

The present invention provides a method and apparatus for obtaining address update information, comprising: obtaining webpage information related to an address update of a named entity; extracting keywords representing an address update clue of the named entity from the webpage information; determining the time and confidence of the address update clue; determining the address update information based on the time and confidence. Using the solution of the present invention can determine address update information through obtained website information.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119 from ChinesePatent Application No. 201110338453.1 filed Oct. 31, 2011, the entirecontents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to data processing technology, moreparticularly, to a method and apparatus for detecting an address updateby processing data information.

2. Description of Related Art

With the continual development of Internet services, various e-maps havebecome important tools of assistance in people's work and life, and theprovided e-map data information will be outdated due to reasons likechanges of addresses, new buildings, city planning, road planning, etc.Usually, map data providers regularly update data. However, such regularupdating is time-consuming and tedious. Especially, some newly occurredaddress change information can not be discovered timely or updated tothe e-map database timely, and the outdated map data will affect users'use.

In the prior art there is also a technical solution of updating map databased on the information submitted by a user on his own initiative;however, such a method cannot discover address update information basedon the webpage information scattering around on the web.

Therefore, a user will suffer from inconvenience caused by outdated mapdata, and thus the existing technology needs to be improved, at leastthe existing technical solutions for updating the address informationneeds to be improved to some extent.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

One aspect of the present invention provides a method for obtainingaddress update information, the method including: obtaining datainformation related to an address update of a named entity; extractingan address update clue of the named entity from the data information;determining the time and confidence of the address update clue; anddetermining a valid address update clue based on the time and confidenceas the address update information.

Another aspect of the present invention provides an apparatus forobtaining address update information, including: obtaining meansconfigured to obtain data information related to an address update of anamed entity; address update clue extracting means configured to extractan address update clue of the named entity from the data information;time and confidence determining means configured to determine the timeand confidence of the address update clue; and address updateinformation determining means configured to determine a valid addressupdate clue based on the time and confidence as the address updateinformation.

Another aspect of the present invention provides a non-transitorycomputer readable article of manufacture tangibly embodying computerreadable instructions which, when executed, cause a computer to carryout the steps of a method for obtaining address update information,including the steps of: obtaining data information related to an addressupdate of a named entity; extracting an address update clue of the namedentity from the data information; determining time and confidence of theaddress update clue; and determining a valid address update clue basedon the time and confidence as the address update information.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The appended claims set forth the inventive features which areconsidered as characteristic of the present invention. However, theinvention itself and its preferred modes of use, objectives,characteristics and advantages can be better understood by reading thefollowing detailed explanations of the illustrative embodiments withreference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 shows an exemplary computing system for implementing embodimentsof the present invention.

FIG. 2 shows a flowchart of a method for obtaining an address change ofa named entity according to one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 shows a flowchart of determining the time of step 203 shown inFIG. 2.

FIG. 4 shows a schematic diagram of an apparatus for obtaining addresschange of a named entity according to one embodiment of the presentinvention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, aspects of the presentinvention can be embodied as a system, method or computer programproduct. Accordingly, aspects of the present invention can take the formof an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment(including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or anembodiment combining software and hardware aspects that can allgenerally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module” or “system.”Furthermore, aspects of the present invention can take the form of acomputer program product embodied any tangible mediums of expressionhaving computer readable program code embodied therein.

Any combination of one or more computer readable medium(s) can beutilized. The computer readable medium can be a computer readable signalmedium or a computer readable storage medium. A computer readablestorage medium can be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic,magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system,apparatus, or device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. Morespecific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer readablestorage medium can include the following: an electrical connectionhaving one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, arandom access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasableprogrammable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), an optical fiber,a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storagedevice, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. In the context of this document, a computer readable storagemedium can be any tangible medium that can contain, or store a programfor use by or in connection with an instruction execution system,apparatus, or device.

A computer readable signal medium can include a propagated data signalwith computer readable program code embodied therein, for example, inbaseband or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated signal can takeany of a variety of forms, including, but not limited to,electro-magnetic, optical, or any suitable combination thereof. Acomputer readable signal medium can be any computer readable medium thatis not a computer readable storage medium and that can communicate,propagate, or transport a program for use by or in connection with aninstruction execution system, apparatus, or device.

Program code embodied on a computer readable medium can be transmittedusing any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless,wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, etc., or any suitable combination ofthe foregoing.

Computer program code for carrying out operations for aspects of thepresent invention can be written in any combination of one or moreprogramming languages, including an object oriented programming languagesuch as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like and conventional proceduralprogramming languages, such as the “C” programming language or similarprogramming languages. The program code can execute entirely on theuser's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alonesoftware package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remotecomputer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latterscenario, the remote computer can be connected to the user's computerthrough any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or awide area network (WAN), or the connection can be made to an externalcomputer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet ServiceProvider).

Aspects of the present invention are described below with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems) and computer program products according to embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer program instructions. These computer program instructions canbe provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, specialpurpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus toproduce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via theprocessor of the computer or other programmable data processingapparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified inthe flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

These computer program instructions can also be stored in a computerreadable medium that can direct a computer, other programmable dataprocessing apparatus, or other devices to function in a particularmanner, such that the instructions stored in the computer readablemedium produce an article of manufacture including instruction meanswhich implements the function/act specified in the flowchart and/orblock diagram block or blocks.

The computer program instructions can also be loaded onto a computer,other programmable data processing apparatus, or other devices to causea series of operational steps to be performed on the computer, otherprogrammable apparatus or other devices to produce a computerimplemented process such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer or other programmable apparatus provide processes forimplementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or blockdiagram block or blocks.

Now referring to FIG. 1, it shows a block diagram of an exemplarycomputing system 100 adapted to implement embodiments of the presentdisclosure. As shown in FIG. 1, computer system 100 can include: CPU(Central Processing Unit) 101, RAM (Random Access Memory) 102, ROM(Read-Only Memory) 103, system bus 104, hard disk controller 105,keyboard controller 106, serial interface controller 107, parallelinterface controller 108, display controller 109, hard disc 110,keyboard 111, serial peripheral 112, parallel peripheral 113 and adisplay 114. Among these devices, CPU 101, RAM 102, ROM 103, hard disccontroller 105, keyboard controller 106, serial controller 107, parallelcontroller 108 and display controller 109 are coupled to system bus 104.Hard disc 110 is coupled to hard disc controller 105; keyboard 111 iscoupled to the keyboard controller 106; serial peripheral 112 is coupledto the serial interface controller 107; parallel peripheral 113 iscoupled to the parallel interface controller 108, and display 114 iscoupled to display controller 119. It shall be appreciated that thestructural block diagram of FIG. 1 is merely shown for illustration,rather than limitation to the scope of the disclosure. In some cases,some devices can be added or removed based on specific situations.

Referring to FIG. 2, it shows a flowchart of a method for obtaining anaddress change of a named entity, which includes the following steps:

At step 201, obtain data information related to an address of a namedentity. The data information includes information in any form, e.g.,webpage information from the web or any information stored in variousstorage mediums. The present application is explained by taking webpageinformation as an example, but this is not limitation to the presentinvention. Here the webpage information specifically refers to messagesreleased on the web via various devices, and which can be obtained fromvarious websites over the web. Such webpage information from websitesincludes but is not limited to news provided by web portals, notices bygovernment agencies, main page information of companies, and as well aswebpage information of types like microblogs. Webpage informationreleased all the time is usually unstructured, and scattered amongvarious websites. It is different from structured information inspecified formats submitted by users on fixed websites, and results indifficulty in processing the information.

The named entity refers to a person's name, name of an organization,name of a place, address and all the other entities identified by names.The identification of a named identity refers to the process ofidentifying a name of a thing of a specific type in a set of documentlike webpage information, etc., and it is realized mainly through thefollowing three aspects: identifying a named entity in a text;determining the type of this entity; and when multiple entities denotethe same thing, selecting one of the entities as the representative ofthis group of entities. This can be realized in any existing manners andis not described here.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, it is determinedthat the webpage information is the webpage information related to theaddress of a named entity based on the named entity as well as at leastone keyword related to an address change being included in the webpageinformation. In this embodiment, step 201 can include two sub-steps:

Sub-step 1: detect and mark a named entity representing a name of aplace or an organization in the webpage information; sub-step 2: detectand mark address update keywords in the webpage information. Thefollowing two embodiments can be applied to detect keywords representingan address update in the text of the webpage information.

In one embodiment, a matching method based on a dictionary is applied todetect address update keywords. The keywords included in the dictionaryare, e.g., {wrong address, address update, correction, correct address,new address, development, construction completed, open to traffic,merge, settle down, removal, . . . }, and address update keywords aredetected in the webpage information by matching with one or morekeywords in the dictionary.

In another embodiment, address update keywords are detected by astatistic learning model. For example, the context distributioncharacteristics of lexical units, parts of speech, semantic categoriesof words, etc., in training samples are extracted, feature vectors foraddress update keywords identification are constructed, and an existingmachine learning statistic method is used to train an address updatekeywords identification model. The identification model, when beingapplied, identifies address update keywords in the present text based onthe distribution characteristics (e.g., lexical units, parts of speech,semantic categories of words) of the text.

At step 202, extract an address update clue of the named entity from thewebpage information. An update clue usually consists of multiple updateinformation entries, e.g. including entries of {named entity of whichthe address is updated, address update keywords, target address}. Insome cases, the target address can be absent, and this does not affectthe value of such an address update clue.

The address update clue can be determined in one of the followingmanners:

In one embodiment, the address update clue is determined based onexplicit address update keywords, because the meaning of the explicitaddress update keywords themselves, e.g., at least one of {wrongaddress, address update, correction, correct address, new address}, canclearly express that the address is changed. For example, an obtainedwebpage message includes the text {the address of our new office isupdated as follows: company name: Beijing ABC Co., Ltd.; address of ourcompany office: XXX Floor, XXX Building, Zhongguancun Street, HaidianDistrict, Beijing}. In the webpage message and the replay chain to themessage, based on the named entity and the address information aroundthe detected address update keywords, the address update clue can bedetermined: {address update keywords: “address . . . is updated”; thenamed entity of which the address changes: “Beijing ABC Co., Ltd.”;target address: “XXX Floor, XXX Building, Zhongguancun Street, HaidianDistrict, Beijing”}.

In another embodiment, it is determined based on implicit address updatekeywords. Such implicit address update keywords, e.g. at least one of{development, construction completed, open to traffic, merge, settledown, removal, . . . }, imply an address change. By detecting a relatedaddress change event and the named entity related to the event aroundthe update keywords, an implied update clue is extracted. For example,the webpage message text={In the morning of Can 25, 2011, in front oftwo elegantly designed office buildings at No. 8 XXX Street, Block C ofZhongguancun West Area, Beijing, people were joyfully celebrating ahousewarming ceremony—the opening ceremony of the new office buildingsof EFG R&D Group}. In this example, the determined address update clueis implied, and the entries included are {address update keywords:housewarming, the opening ceremony of the new office buildings; namedentity: EFG R&D Group; target address: No. 8 XXX Street, Block C ofZhongguancun West Area, Beijing}.

In another embodiment, it is determined based on other place names,surrounding buildings, enterprises or regions appearing together withthe named entity as well as relative position to the named entity, etc.included in the context information. For example, from “I'm now at HIJ(China) Company, and to the left of the building are Water Cube andBird's Nest”, can be determined an address update clue={named entity:HIJ (China) Company; context clue: to the left of the building, WaterCube, Bird's Nest}. Thus, the address update information of HIJ Companycan be obtained based on the nouns of locality as well as other placenames, buildings etc. appearing together included in the context clue.

Step 203, determine the time and confidence of the address update clue.At this step, the focus is the time when the address update eventcorresponding to the address update clue recorded in the webpageinformation occurs, not the time of release of the information. At thisstep, the confidence of the address update clue can be determined in oneof the following implementations or a combination thereof:

In one implementation, the confidence is determined based on the actionof the author of the webpage information. When the address update eventin the webpage information has been validated, it is deemed as having ahigh confidence; news or information that has not been verified, e.g.,forwarded another's message, or news from other websites, is deemed ashaving a low confidence.

For example, assume the obtained webpage information is “I went to XXXRestaurant yesterday, and its address is changed to XXX road crossingnow”. It is prior art to determine whether an address update event hasbeen validated by analyzing the sentence, and specifically the check ofthe confidence can be performed by the following steps:

A) Use word segmentation to obtain word units={“I”, “yesterday”, “went”,“XXX Restaurant”};

B) Identify parts of speech of some word units={I (pronoun), yesterday(adverb), went (verb), XXX Restaurant (organization)};

C) Use syntax analysis to obtain a syntax tree={predicate: went;subject: I; temporal adverbial: yesterday; location adverbial: XXXRestaurant};

D) Based on the syntax tree, extract validation behavior: through thesubject “I” and the predicate “went”, the webpage information can bedeemed as validated information, and has a high confidence.

In another implementation, it can also be determined by the authority ofthe author of the webpage information, and the authority can bedetermined by factors such as the author's identify, reputation orhistory. For example, the company, as the author of the news to discloseits own address change, is deemed as having a high confidence.

In another implementation, the support degree in the reply chain isdetermined based on the expressions of agreement or disagreement in thereplies to or comments on the webpage information. Specifically, it isobtained by analyzing keywords representing approval, e.g., “agree”,“disagree”, “support”, “oppose”, “incorrect”, “wrong”, “right”,“correct”, “approve”, or a syntactical structure representing approval.

At step 204, a valid address update clue is determined as the addressupdate information based on the time and confidence, by selecting anaddress change information with a higher confidence within apredetermined time period, or by selecting, among a plurality of piecesof address change information with a higher confidences, a more recentpiece of address change information. Or the address update clue with thehighest confidence and with the time within a predetermined time period,or the address update clue with the confidence within a predeterminedrange and with the time being the most recent, can be selected.

Further, as an optional step, after step 204, an address correctionoperation is determined based on the address update keywords in thevalid address update clue. The type of the address correction operationcan be, e.g., one or more of amending the address, adding a new addressand deleting the address. In one embodiment, based on the keywords“newly built” (road, high-rise building), a correction operation isdetermined to be “adding a new address”; based on the keywords “wrongaddress”, a correction operation is determined to be “deleting theaddress”; based on the keywords “merge, address update, correct, newaddress”, etc., a correction operation is determined to be “amendingaddress”. Those skilled in the art can create the correspondingrelationship between the other address update keywords and the addresscorrection operation. An address change alarm can be provided based onthe valid address update clue, or update of the map data can beperformed directly based on the valid address update clue.

FIG. 3 shows an embodiment disclosed by the present invention, showing aflowchart of step 203 shown in FIG. 2. It can include the followingsteps:

At step 301, detect a time phrase related to the address update clue inthe webpage information;

At step 302, convert the time phrase into an absolute time. According toan implementation, step 302 can be implemented by the following steps:

At step 3021, determine whether the time phase as a time clue is anabsolute time; in response to that the time phase is an absolute time,at step 3025, directly determine it as the time of the address updateevent. Here the explicit absolute time refers to time information invarious formats. For example, for the web message “In the morning of Can25, 2011, in front of two elegantly designed office buildings at No. 8XXX Street, Block C of Zhongguancun West Area, Beijing, people werejoyfully celebrating a housewarming ceremony—the opening ceremony of thenew office buildings of EFG R&D Group”, Mary 25, 2011 is a clearlyexpressed absolute time.

At step 3022, determine whether the time phrase as a time clue is arelative time, and in response to that the time keywords are an impliedrelative time, convert it to an absolute time at step 3023, and then atstep 3025, use it as the time of the address update event. In responseto that the time keywords are not a relative time, proceed to step 3024.For example, today, yesterday, last week, etc., express relative times.In such a case, the implied relative time clue can be converted into thetime stamp of the address update event based on another absolute timethat can be obtained from the context, the reply chain and the commenthistory of the released information. For example, “Today is the firstday that EFG Research (Asia) does the office work in the new officebuilding; in the entire morning, colleagues are busy tidying things ontheir own brand-new seats; if they encounter other colleagues taking aleisure walk and visiting around, they will greet each other and ask foreach other's new seats. From now on, we will clearly remember a newaddress: XXX Building, No. 8 XXX Street, Block C of Zhongguancun WestArea, Beijing, and this is EFG Research (Asia) . . . ”.

At step 3024, it can be deemed that no time terms are detected, and thetime of release of the web page information is extracted, and at step3025, it is used as the time of the address update clue.

By implementing the above disclosed method process in the computersystem shown in FIG. 1, the present application is further embodied asan apparatus for obtaining address update information of a named entity.FIG. 4 shows a schematic block diagram of this apparatus, mainlyincluding: obtaining means 401 configured to obtain data informationrelated to an address update of a named entity; address update clueextracting means 402 configured to extract an address update clue of thenamed entity from the webpage information; time and confidencedetermining means 403 configured to determine the time and confidence ofthe address update clue; and address update information determiningmeans 404 configured to determine a valid address update clue as theaddress update information based on the time and confidence.

In an embodiment, the obtaining means, based on that the datainformation includes a named entity and at least one address updatekeyword, obtain the data information related to the address update ofthe named entity.

In one embodiment, the address update clue includes the named entity ofwhich the address is updated, address update keywords and a targetaddress.

In an embodiment, the address update clue extracting means includes:means for detecting, in the data information, a time phrase related tothe address update clue; means for determining an absolute time of theaddress update clue based on the detection result of the time phrase.

In an embodiment, the means for determining an absolute time of theaddress update clue based on the detection result of the time phraseincludes: means for, in response to that the time phrase is an absolutetime, directly determining it as the time of the address update clue;means for, in response to that the time phrase is a relative time,converting it into an absolute time as the time of the determinedaddress update clue; means for, in response to not detecting any timeterm, directly determining the time of release of the webpageinformation as the time of the address update clue.

In an embodiment, the time and confidence determining means includes atleast one of the following means: means for determining based on thedegree that the data information is verified, where when the datainformation has been verified, it has a higher confidence; and when thedata information is only forwarded, it has a lower confidence; means fordetermining based on the support degree information obtained fromcomments on the data information; means for determining based on theauthority of the author of the data information.

In an embodiment, the address update information determining meansincludes: means for selecting an address update clue with the highestconfidence and with the time within a predetermined time period, ormeans for selecting an address update clue with the confidence within apredetermined range and with the time being the most recent.

In one embodiment, it further includes means for determining an addresscorrection operation based on the address update keywords in the validaddress update clue.

In one embodiment, the address correction operation is one or more ofamending the address, adding a new address, deleting the address.

In one embodiment, it further includes: means for providing an addresschange alert or directly updating map data based on the address updateinformation.

The above descriptions is only exemplary, rather than limitation to thepresent invention. The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figuresillustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possibleimplementations of systems, methods and computer program productsaccording to various embodiments of the present invention. In thisregard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams can represent amodule, segment, or portion of code, which includes one or moreexecutable instructions for implementing the specified logicalfunction(s). It should also be noted that, in some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the block can occur out of theorder noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in successioncan, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks cansometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocksin the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implementedby special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specifiedfunctions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware andcomputer instructions

1. A method for obtaining address update information, the methodcomprising: obtaining data information related to an address update of anamed entity; extracting an address update clue of the named entity fromthe data information; determining time and confidence of the addressupdate clue; and determining a valid address update clue based on thetime and confidence as the address update information.
 2. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the data information related to the address update ofthe named entity is obtained when the data information includes thenamed entity and at least one address update keyword.
 3. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the address update clue includes (i) the named entityof which the address is updated, (ii) address update keywords and (iii)a target address.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the timeof the address update clue comprises: detecting, in the datainformation, a time phrase related to the address update clue; anddetermining an absolute time of the address update clue based on thedetection result of the time phrase.
 5. The method of claim 4, whereindetermining the absolute time of the address update clue based on thedetection result of the time phrase comprises: in response to the timephrase being an absolute time, determining the absolute time as the timeof the address update clue; in response to the time phrase being arelative time, determining, after converting it into an absolute time,the absolute time as the time of the address update clue; and inresponse to not detecting any time term related to the address updateclue, determining the time of release of the data information as thetime of the address update clue.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein theconfidence is determined based on the degree that the data informationis validated, wherein, when the data information has been validated, ithas a higher confidence, and when the data information is merelyforwarded, it has a lower confidence.
 7. The method of claim 1, whereinthe confidence is determined based on the support degree informationobtained from comments on the data information.
 8. The method of claim1, wherein the confidence is determined based on authority of an authorof the data information.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein determiningthe valid address update clue based on the time and the confidencecomprises: selecting the address update clue with the highest confidenceand with the time within a predetermined time period.
 10. The method ofclaim 1, wherein determining the valid address update clue based on thetime and the confidence comprises: selecting the address update cluewith the confidence within a predetermined range and with the time beingthe most recent.
 11. The method of claim 1, further comprisingdetermining an address correction operation based on the address updatekeywords in the valid address update clue.
 12. The method of claim 11,wherein the address correction operation comprises amending the address.13. The method of claim 11, wherein the address correction operationcomprises adding a new address.
 14. The method of claim 11, wherein theaddress correction operation comprises deleting the address.
 15. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising providing an address change alert.16. The method of claim 1, further comprising directly updating map databased on the address update information.
 17. An apparatus for obtainingaddress update information, comprising: obtaining means configured toobtain data information related to an address update of a named entity;address update clue extracting means configured to extract an addressupdate clue of the named entity from the data information; time andconfidence determining means configured to determine time and confidenceof the address update clue; and address update information determiningmeans configured to determine a valid address update clue based on thetime and confidence as the address update information.
 18. The apparatusof claim 17, wherein the obtaining means obtains data informationrelated to the address update of the named entity when the datainformation includes a named entity and at least one address updatekeyword.
 19. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein determining the time ofthe address update clue comprises: means for detecting, in the datainformation, a time phrase related to the address update clue; and meansfor determining an absolute time of the address update clue based on thedetection result of the time phrase.
 20. The apparatus of claim 19,wherein the means for determining an absolute time of the address updateclue based on the detection result of the time phrase comprises: meansfor, in response to the time phrase being an absolute time, determiningthe absolute time as the time of the address update clue; means for, inresponse to the time phrase being a relative time, converting it into anabsolute time as the time of the address update clue; means for, inresponse to not detecting any time term, directly determining the timeof release of the data information as the time of the address updateclue.
 21. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the time and the confidencedetermining means comprises: means for determining based on the degreethat the data information is validated, wherein, when the datainformation has been validated, it has a higher confidence, and when thedata information is merely forwarded, it has a lower confidence.
 22. Theapparatus of claim 17, wherein the time and the confidence determiningmeans comprises: means for determining based on the support degreeinformation obtained from comments on the data information.
 23. Theapparatus of claim 17, wherein the time and the confidence determiningmeans comprises means for determining based on authority of an author ofthe data information.
 24. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the addressupdate information determining means comprises: means for selecting anaddress update clue with the highest confidence and with the time withina predetermined time period.
 25. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein theaddress update information determining means comprises means forselecting the address update clue with the confidence within apredetermined range and with the time being the most recent.
 26. Theapparatus of claim 17, further comprising means for determining anaddress correction operation based on address update keywords in thevalid address update clue.
 27. The apparatus of claim 26, wherein theaddress correction operation comprises amending the address.
 28. Theapparatus of claim 26, wherein the address correction operationcomprises adding a new address.
 29. The apparatus of claim 26, whereinthe address correction operation comprises deleting the address.
 30. Theapparatus of claim 17, further comprising means for providing an addresschange alert.
 31. The apparatus of claim 17, further comprising meansfor directly updating map data based on the address update information.32. A non-transitory computer readable article of manufacture tangiblyembodying computer readable instructions which, when executed, cause acomputer to carry out the steps of a method for obtaining address updateinformation, comprising the steps of: obtaining data information relatedto an address update of a named entity; extracting an address updateclue of the named entity from the data information; determining time andconfidence of the address update clue; and determining a valid addressupdate clue based on the time and confidence as the address updateinformation.